Congressional leaders are pushing the TSA to ramp up protections against what they consider an “information technology insider threat”. In other words, they are concerned that TSA employees will rebel against or attempt to sabotage the federal agency by leaking sensitive information.

A DHS inspector general report, [2]released last week, concluded that the although the TSA has created an Insider Threat Working Group, and an Insider Threat Section, the agency does not have adequate countermeasures in place against potential information leaks.

The report recommended that the TSA should actively train all of it’s staff on data protection and ” implement insider threat policies”.

The report also recommended that the TSA should centrally monitor all of its systems to ensure insiders do not tamper with , transmit or remove any information beyond the agency’s network.

This week, the ranking members of the Homeland Security Committee and the Transportation Security Subcommittee wrote to TSA head John Pistole, asking for clarification[3] on what the TSA is doing regarding the matter.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), and Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) have been pressing the TSA on the issue of insider threat programs for four months now with little or no response.

In July the two sent a letter [4]to the TSA outlining concerns that insider threat countermeasures planned for implementation at the TSA seem to be geared towards monitoring employees and interfering with legitimate attempts by employees to act as whistle-blowers.

The TSA has not responded to the Congressional inquiry.

In June, the TSA issued a solicitation[5]for an “enterprise insider threat software package”, in other words, spyware that will allow the agency to monitor the emails, chat, web browser history, and even the keystrokes of its employees.

The TSA contracting documents[6] stated, “In order to detect an insider threat, technology is required to monitor and obtain visibility into users’ actions.”

The document also noted that the spyware should provide the agency with the capability to “mine through all the collected data using built-in or third-party tools,” allow for the movement of the data to a central command, and also “alert” TSA officials of any abnormalities “based on specific criteria such as a name and/or combination of names,”

“The end user (employee) must not have the ability to detect this technology,” the document also stated.

In their letter, Thompson and Lee hasked that “TSA immediately withdraw this solicitation and refrain from attempting to acquire technology with similar capabilities.”

“While the law governing TSA employees does not afford specific protections to ensure employee whistleblower protections, the agency is not completely insulated from the affects of the Constitution,” they wrote. “It would seem that installation of the type of technology sought in the solicitation would enable TSA to monitor employee communications with the OSC, the department’s Office of Inspector General and the Congress of the United States.” the representatives concluded.

When Nilda C. Marugame, a TSA worker at Lihue airport, subsequently attempted to notify the Assistant Federal Security Director about the incident, she was immediately suspended for three days and then coerced into signing a statement that erroneously characterized the sexual advances as being consensual.

In a separate case, earlier this year, a TSA screener spoke out regarding the federal agency’s $1 billion dollar plus fleet of body scanners, labeling them completely useless and revealing that the machines routinely fail to pick up prohibited items such as knives, guns and powder designed to resemble explosive material.

In an interview conducted by Jon Corbett, the engineer who recently exposed how the scanners could be fooled [8]by simply securing an object inside an external pocket sewn on to an item of clothing, the anonymous TSA screener, also revealed how the federal agency forced people without the necessary training to operate the scanners.

When the TSA worker wrote to her Congressman complaining about the problems, the agency retaliated by removing her from screening duties and began the process to dismiss her altogether.

The following videos document the case:

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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com[9], and Prisonplanet.com[1]. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.[10]